Students tackle affordable housing head-on with capstone project
By Rick Karlin
Mike Hansen is a senior at Paul Smith’s College majoring in natural resource conservation management with a minor in sustainability. But he’s also getting a jump in an increasingly unaffordable housing market.
In addition to learning about the biology of trees, ecology and watershed management, Hansen this year also built a tiny house, along with five other students as part of a capstone program offered by Deb Naybor, an associate professor of environmental studies.
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“I would totally live in something like this,” Hansen, 21, said as he showed off the house.
A future in resource management
He hopes upon graduation to move west – he has a brother in Colorado – and work in the resource management field. Like the Adirondacks, housing prices in the Rocky Mountains have skyrocketed in recent years, putting a home purchase out of range for young people starting their careers. But Hansen has mulled building his own tiny house that could be put on a trailer, making it akin to an RV or mobile home, albeit one made in part from local Adirondack timber.
Related reading: Community efforts fuel affordable housing successes in the Adirondacks
“They may want to be a (forest) ranger, but they can’t buy a $350,000 home,’’ Naybor said of her students. By teaching them to build a tiny house that they might be able to reside in, Naylor said the students are acquiring useful skills that any homeowner should have. Additionally, they would be getting a jump on the housing market and building some equity should they choose to someday build a home of their own.
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Sustainable to the core
The tiny house project is far more than a way for students to acquire building skills, though. The main goal, Naybor said, centers on sustainability and demonstrating how people everywhere, including the Adirondacks, can build more environmentally sustainable housing. The means structures using local, low-cost materials as well as making use of recycled or home-made materials.
The door frames, for example, came from a nearby home that was going to be renovated and were about to be discarded. The windows were literally found on the side of the road. The ceiling came from locally cut timber which was milled and planed at Paul Smith’s on-site sawmill.
“We used as much surplus material as we could,” said Naybor. One exception was the blown-in insulation, a necessity for the Adirondacks’ cold winters.
As a result, this structure was built for $2,800.
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To be sure, the tiny house, dubbed the “Blue Raven Cabin,” is truly tiny, measuring 8×10 feet. It doesn’t include plumbing or electricity, but Naybor says it was designed in a way that another tiny house could be attached to provide a kitchen and bathroom.
“It was a proof of concept,” Naybor said, explaining that rather than serving as a “shop class” build, it’s a capstone for one of her sustainability classes.
Paul Smith’s doesn’t offer a construction or homebuilding major. But the concept fits in with other courses of study such as forestry – using local lumber – and various sustainability-focused majors.
Interdisciplinary collaboration
In addition to training future foresters, rangers and resource managers, Paul Smith’s also has an extensive hospitality and culinary arts program. Naybor said students who are majoring in baking and pastry arts, for example, have participated in similar building projects and the ability to follow a recipe can translate into following a blueprint.
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The Blue Raven’s construction crew was all male, but other projects, including a wooden tear-drop trailer have included female builders.
Hansen, who grew up in New Hartford, near Utica, spent four summers working on a carpentry crew at Hamilton College and acted as a student leader on the tiny house. He took on the more intricate tasks, such as cutting “crow’s foot” notches into the rafters to prevent any possible swaying or shifting of the roof.
One of the major takeaways for the less experienced participants, he said, was longstanding advice to “measure twice and cut once,” when building the structure.
A maker space
The Blue Raven was built in a garage adjacent to the Makers’ Space that Naybor runs. During a recent visit, the small shop room was buzzing with students building other projects that showcase energy efficiency or how to upcycle materials and other items that might normally end up in a landfill.
Naybor during a reporter’s visit, asked two students to figure out how to turn an old child’s bike into a table. Students started taking measurements and brainstorming ideas.
A few feet away, another pair were placing seeds into flower boxes they had built and will eventually place around the campus.
Off in a corner, a 3D printer was printing plastic components for a miniature wind turbine they are making. The device will fit on a tabletop and generate about 5 watts, or enough to charge an AA battery, said Naybor.
Related reading: How Warren County is using technology to identify housing opportunities
“It’s always mass chaos in here,” Naybor joked.
She and her student makers are both focused and freewheeling, as evidenced by the tie-dye work clothes that some wear when working on projects.
How did all this come about?
Naybor graduated from Paul Smith’s in 1977 with a degree in forestry.
“I was a Long Island suburban kid, and I wanted to figure out how I could live in the woods and build my own cabin,” she said.
She ended up operating a land surveying business in western New York, eventually went back to school and earned a PhD. in geography at the University of Buffalo.
She came to Paul Smith’s to teach in 2015.
And yes, she lives in a 14x 20-foot cabin in the woods near the campus.
“I’ve been interested in tiny houses probably for 40 years,” she said.
That handily predates the current interest in tiny homes, which started growing in the past decade-and-a-half, triggered by shows like “Tiny House Nation,” and increasing desire by consumers for sustainability.
Other schools are following suit
Some other schools are also producing tiny homes as class projects.
Students at Columbia-Greene Community College in the Hudson Valley built a tiny house and high school pupils at Franklin Essex Hamilton BOCES in nearby Saranac Lake have built a number of tiny homes over the past several years. Those homes are complete with plumbing and electric appliances.
Plans are to auction the Paul Smith’s tiny home.
Naybor said the money will go back to the school. The Columbia-Greene home, which was 20×8 feet, and included plumbing, heating, kitchen and bathroom went for $59,000 last summer.
Naybor isn’t sure what their structure will get.
Paul Smith’s students previously built a tiny house structure in partnership with the Akwesasne Mohawk, that is a mobile “Cultural Learning Lab.”
And Naybor said she viewed tiny homes as an integral part of her teaching from the beginning.
“When I got to Paul Smith’s,” she said, “I thought this is something that students should know and understand.”
Top photo: Deb Naybor stands outside of the Blue Raven Cabin. Photo by Rick Karlin
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